James W. Donovan

“ Men and woman cannot know what their sweethearts will be after marriage. I have known a sensitive man, a genius with a soul like a star, whose life was a pilgrimage over burning coals, because his wife was a coarse termagant. Many a gifted woman, fit to be a queen or an empress, is chained to a clod of a husband, whose forced companionship is to her the tortures of Inferno. ”

“ Many a woman has had pity on a rakish man or a drunkard and married him to reform his nature. Better, far better, trust a child with a runaway horse or a mad dog. Danger seen and not avoided is criminal carelessness. Surely you can save one life, and its happiness, in such cases. One is quite enough to be sacrificed. Let bravery be shown by demanding a full surrender and reasonable atonement.
Don’t marry for an ideal marriage only. The girlish dream of marriage is so wide of the reality as to be dangerous. ”

“ He must be suited to any condition of beauty, genius, or intellect. Don’t refuse a President’s offer; you may never get but one such in a lifetime.
Do marry a plain man. Just a plain, common-sense man; be he banker, lawyer, doctor, farmer, builder, merchant, so he is a man; for manhood is at a premium to-day in home life! The world is full to overflowing with brilliant men. ”

“ One who goes from city to city and captivates too many by his oil of blandness; one who has no business, an idler; one who apes the rich and is ground down in poverty; one who lacks the courage to live like himself and had rather live a lie and deceive the world around him,—is an unfit companion, and will bear watching.
Don’t marry a coquette. One that is worn out by a long list of discarded admirers is like stale bread—worse every day and seldom grows better by long standing. There are women, and girls sometimes, who glory and revel in the names of discarded lovers ”

“ If one seek beauty alone, he will find it in the fields and flowers and gardens, in paintings, art works, and things of nature; while the real pleasures of life may be found in a thousand ways outside of the worship of beauty.
There are a dozen considerations beyond beauty that should govern the choice of a companion. Think for a moment whom you admire most, trust implicitly, and love more ardently than all others. ”

“ But be sensible, for a life contract should be a sensible one. What is the use of throwing away one season—skipping girlhood or boyhood to rush into maturity and maternity? The records of divorce courts tell the silly and sorrowful stories of many a mismated pair, married too young and slowly repenting of their rashness. Ask of your truest friends; take counsel; be above foolishness.
Don’t marry a villain. Many a girl is ripe for an adventure, and in appearance nothing more resembles an angel than a keen and designing [11] villain—a thoroughbred; not a gambler merely, but worse, a wreck! ”

“ It is a mistake to think that most people are bad because the bad ones get so often chronicled in public journals. The good, like the virtuous, live and die and demand no praise of their virtue. The great mass of men are sensible, and honest and upright and sober, and worthy to marry.
Don’t break a marriage abruptly. This is the wrong way to break a bad match. It intensifies affection. It leads to elopement, or that slow canker in a girl’s nature ending in melancholy, or insanity. ”

“ It is not a crime to be rich, or to be poor. It is a crime to be listless in a busy world. He would be disgraced who, standing on a wharf, saw a drowning crew without offering relief. He [56] would be a coward who would not defend a woman in distress; yet all around us are the needy, helpless, drowning, starving, whom it is our duty to rescue and lift up in life; and marriage is the place where society is born, and grows and ripens into use. ”

“ They may be a dreary [24] dream of home and early separation. Think of the ties of friendship, the cords of affection twined and woven around your nature; ties that are not severed without many pangs of sorrow. Life is a short, strange journey, and, make it when we will or where we will, it is pleasant to be made with company. Those who know us best will love us most if we deserve it, and few will continue on in friendship long after we go to strange and unknown countries. A stranger neighbor soon comes nearer than a long-absent friend whom we never hear from. ”

“ What do you expect of a man, anyway—to be a genius, an inventor, and a writing-teacher? No, I can’t bother my brains with copying worth four to six hundred a year at the highest.” This covers the whole subject in a sentence. But it is well to add that Nature is sparing of her gifts. To one she allots beauty, to another strength, to another wisdom, to a third courage, to a fourth ability to acquire riches, to another that to write and speak, to teach, to manage, to paint, or to control armies: all are not alike, and to no one belong all virtues. ”

“ They may live rich and expensive lives for a season; ill-gotten gains are not lasting. Heaven pity the girl that marries one of these adventurers, for the end is bitterness! A friend met one on the Pacific road, married him, and learned to her sorrow that he drank to excess, swore like a pirate, lived in debauchery, and early offered to swap wives for a season with a boon-companion. “And that man,” she said, “was as handsome as a dude, as slick as an auctioneer, as oily as a pedler; I loved him only one day after marriage.” ”

“ If man or woman could only wait in seasons of anger, all would blow over and harmony return like spring flowers, that are not always in blossom.
Don’t both speak at once, nor both get angry at once, nor both be too determined at once. No one is ever convinced by angry tones. ”

“ A flirting woman on a public street is a sorry picture; even one who stoops to notice her must secretly know her measure. She deceives no one, for her character, like the dude’s, is so transparent that no one mistakes its meaning. The habit of going nowhere for nothing is as foolish as it is injurious.
Character grows out of little things. It may be that being seen with a disreputable person three times, or even once, will change the whole current of our career. Don’t practise the vices of dudes nor the habits of street flirts.
Do not marry a boy or girl who is not good at home. ”

“ Don’t marry without love. It will be plain enough after a while. You will not mind it at first, perhaps, but the time will come when, by a song, or a face, or a voice, or a form, you will awake as from a dream, to find you have chosen carelessly. ”

“ Life becomes a burden, and death a sweet release from such a cross. Of all the matches on earth, the most to be dreaded and avoided is the drunkard’s wife.
Don’t marry a fast man or woman. Something tells us that black logs will darken the whitest garments. The edge of virtue once dulled is never quite so keen afterwards. ”

“ I have learned that lesson dearly, learned it living where we see so little of real life that memory is all the hope I have.”
“Starving amid plenty is cruelty,” I said. “Sell half and live while you may. You are wasting your whole lives in a fruitless hunt for happiness.” ”

“ A loveless marriage may stand throughout a honeymoon. It may last in youth, but not when storms and trials come in after-years. It lacks that something which words do not well express,—continuity, heart-bound devotion, and endurance. ”

“ The habit of living is formed early. Either one is bent on rising or going lower. As water seeks its level, so men seek their ambition and find it. Prosperity comes not on silver trays, ready-made and ready for use to everybody; most men work for it, strive for it, and deserve it. The sons of the [25] rich, who inherit property and have formed the habit of useless spending, are a little bit lower than the poor. It is not disgraceful at all to be born poor; but to become so after once being rich, and that through reckless spending, is a dishonor to any one. ”

“ Men and women often rush into matrimony as game is run into a trap, for the little tempting bait set to catch them (a catch-as-catch-can race) . They marry and risk a life-long happiness on less actual information of each other’s real nature than a good horseman would exact of his carriage horse’s pedigree. This may do in the country, but never will answer in a city. Sense and reason dictate that men and women, to enjoy each other’s society, should see well to the match beforehand. ”

“ There are many little odd-faced [60] fellows who grow up to be fine manly men. The growth from boyhood or girlhood to youth, and youth to manhood or womanhood, and so on to old age, is marvellous. It takes a keen sense of foresight to measure the future of many boys and girls by their beginning. There is no rule safer than choosing a good form, a good brain, a good temper, and a good character, and waiting for the other developments.
Endure what cannot be cured, and don’t wish your wife or husband were as handsome as some neighbor or as rich as some nabob. Youth and good qualities are riches. ”

“ When will married people and unmarried people, and lovers and neighbors, learn how pleasant peace is, and how awkward it is to quarrel together?
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One man pounds his finger with a tack-hammer and blames his wife for it a month later; one man’s goose gets in a neighbor’s garden and is killed—perhaps served him right—and yet they are sworn enemies for five years later; and not until some child is rescued from a burning building or a mad dog, by the enemy neighbor do the two know how pleasant and useful it is to dwell in harmony. ”

“ It is not only trifling away the time of both, but casting distrust on the holiest of all sentiments, the purity of womanhood. To steal money is honorable compared to stealing affection.
The habit of coquetry will, or may, last long after marriage. She who practises it will follow up in unpleasant references to her conquests, wishing she had married at this offer or that, and wear out the happiness of her last conquest by a frequent reminder of his inferiority to the others.
Don’t marry a woman for her money. These people are tenacious to a minute degree. ”

“ Winning a wife or a lover is a rare art. To be worthy of either is the first essential. It is better to be worthy of it than to be President and unworthy.
It must be consoling even to a jilted lover to feel that he is superior to the one successful. The next thing to being worthy is being ready. Many a youth begins driving, sleighing, and dressing for society who pays his clothing bills by instalments, and whose salary is wholly unequal to his outlay.
Fairness demands that a girl in marrying should [76] better her condition. How can one expect her to marry into misery? ”

“ Public offices are public trusts, and all that such responsibility implies, and there are women in stations where the word home has very little [74] meaning, and other women who long for the quiet and comfort of true domestic life away from the cares of office and the demands of lofty stations.
Two of the things that lead to greatest misery of the masses to-day are over-ambition and reckless marriages.
Don’t coax a woman to love you. If you wish to win, that is certainly the wrong way. If they have any notion of it, you are in the opposite direction of success. ”

“ Absorbed in her duties as a wife, she had little room for society, while he, a man relieved by riches from hard labor, was approaching that prime of maturity when the world looks complacently upward to one who has prospered, not even asking how, or why, or any reason.
Long trips to large cities, absence from home, mingling often with wealthy lumbermen, and assuming that position that wealth ever commands in society, were doing for Cyrus Arthur what they will do for many in like situations. ”

“ Fast men are not satisfied with one vice merely, but follow on to many. They may drink, gamble, sport, and venture, and step by step indulge in the kindred vices of lewdness, till disease shall fasten its clutches in their burning blood and run in their veins for a lifetime. They are rarely satisfied with one home, one wife, and one family. ”

“ Giddings and Collier and Garfield all started low on the ladder, and ended high in honor and worthy of any woman’s affection.
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If we could only get near enough to Genius to comprehend its superior worth; if we could reverence talent and admire integrity and take true measure of prospective greatness, what a fortune we would possess!
Like high-priced lots in large cities, the discoverers of rare locations seldom knew the value of their purchases. It takes time for development; more time in genius and character than we are always ready to wait for ”

“ What sublime contempt a man must have for one who simply loves his pocket-book! Why not love his farm, or lumber-yard, or herd of cattle? [8] The love of money is a miserly pretence of affection that leads to discontent, distrust, and disgust when they find it out.
Besides, wealthy men are men of care. The wife of a noted millionnaire has had her husband’s body stolen from its vault, has been long kept in agony, is an object of pity to all who know her. Another wife was heard to say, “Why, I don’t have the privilege, nor the money, nor the good times that my girl Bridget enjoys. ”

“ He is capable of good deeds, and incapable of mean ones. He has a good name.” He deserves success, and it will follow him. He is plain, perhaps, but man outgrows it. He is not a painting, an imitation, a counterfeit, but simply a man. He will do to marry; so will she, the last-named.
Don’t marry from pity. It may be akin to love, but the kinship is quite distant. Many a weak [39] woman has so married, and only once regretted it—each and every day afterwards. A life-long regret must follow. What a cold respect is that compliment to any woman, “I took pity on her!” ”

“ You will learn this lesson all too dearly when it’s over. Life is too short for those who love it and are well mated; but many a miserable marriage has made one or the other wish for death a million times, to be rid of its burden. ”

“ Tell a child to leave something alone, and he sulks to touch it. Tell a girl that the man she admires is distasteful to her relatives, and she half despises them from a simple motive of resentment. Lead her by reason to see with her own eyes, and she will be convinced.
The great London actor, Garrick, played the drunkard to disenchant a girl, and succeeded. Her parents might have tried it a lifetime and failed. Human nature is queer. It will lead when the way is enticing. It will magnify discoveries, but they must be discovered in the right manner. ”

“ Fun will grow stale and threadbare; one cannot live by it. Life is a trip that costs car fare, wash bills, board bills, trinkets, notions, and actual outlays. Real providers are never clowns; the clownish fellow is a favorite in school-days. He is so cute, just as cute as a cotton hat, so cunning, so witty, so nice. Is he? Wait a few years, until his nice nonsense turns to active business!
Don’t marry a dude. Of all milk-and-water specimens, a dude is the lowest,—a little removed [36] from nothing; a dressed-up model for a tailor-shop (sometimes it’s in woman form) ”